


and now for something completely different

by morningCrescent



Series: Bros With Benefits [8]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:57:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3292913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningCrescent/pseuds/morningCrescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave goes to Rose to talk about his feelings for Karkat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and now for something completely different

“Rose?”

“Come in,” she answers from inside her room. You enter and shut the door behind you. She’s sitting on her bed with a book, though she doesn’t appear to be reading it at the moment.

“Got a second?” you ask, sitting next to her regardless of her answer.

“I’ll always make time for my dearest brother,” she replies. “What’s on your mind?”

You sigh. You know she’s going to go all therapist on your ass, but then again, that’s kind of why you came to her.

“It’s about Karkat,” you say.

“I could have figured as much. Everything with you seems to be about him these days. I take it your relationship has gotten quite serious?”

“Well I mean… I guess you could say that.”

“Hm,” she says, and it’s the kind of ‘hm’ that you know means ‘I know you’re not saying what you mean.’

“I don’t know, yeah. We’re pretty serious. Like, I don’t think we’re getting married anytime soon, but I just…” You pause.

“Just what?”

“Just…” You swallow a few times, trying to figure out what you’re trying to say. Finally, you start up again. “Okay, it’s like, I never thought I’d be… in love, you know? And, and now I… I am, in love I mean, with Karkat, and it’s weird because it’s so much more than I ever thought it would be and I don’t know what to _do_ about it.”

“You don’t know what to do about being in love with your boyfriend?”

“No… I mean, yeah... I mean, shit. This is gonna sound stupid but… I love him. Like, a lot. A lot, a lot.”

“Yes, we’re all aware. Him most of all, I would think.”

“No, Rose, you’re not understanding. I _love_ him. I am _in love_ with him. Like. Fuck. How do I explain it? I feel like—look at that, you’ve got me using ‘I’ statements and everything—I’d do anything for him. And I know that sounds stupid as fuck, but it’s true. And it’s kind of fucking terrifying.”

“Love does tend to be that way.”

“Rose, I—I’m freaking out, here. He’s… god, this is gonna sound terrible but… he’s my everything. He’s half my body. He’s, like, seeped into my empty spaces and I can’t get him out and I don’t _want_ to get him out, I want him to stay there forever and I want to be like that for him too and—fuck, how ridiculous does that sound?”

“Hm,” she says, and this time it’s more of a ‘go on’ kind of ‘hm.’

“I know, I know. I sound like some obsessive lovestruck teenager with an unhealthy fixation and and an over-dependency complex because I wasn’t loved enough as a child and—”

You stop, because Rose is giving you a Look and you fear you may have said too much, even though you were clearly being hypothetical and even if you weren’t she already knows all about your childhood, she’s the only person you’ve ever told the full story and, and—anyway, that’s not the point. You take a deep, shuddering breath, and continue.

“What I’m trying to say is that I know it sounds like the most stupid thing in the world but I’m so fucking in love with Karkat that it hurts but I don’t want it to stop because, let’s be real, this relationship is pretty much the best thing I have going on right now and I—fuck, I just want him to be happy and every time I make him smile it’s like, hell yeah, that’s what I wanna keep doing for the rest of my life.”

“I see,” Rose says after a moment.

“What do you see?”

“If I may offer my professional diagnosis, I would say that you are Really Fucking Gay.”

“Dear lord,” you say with mock horror. “Is it terminal, doctor?”

“I’m afraid so,” she says solemnly.

“But for real,” you say, trying to get back to the matter at hand. “Is any of this normal? Have you ever felt like that about Kanaya?”

She seems to think on that for a moment, then says, “I can’t say my feelings for Kanaya are entirely dissimilar to what you’re expressing, though it’s possible you are having a harder time processing these feelings, and for that reason you experience them more strongly and, perhaps, more painfully.”

You take a moment to absorb all this, silently thanking Rose for not bringing up your brother, even though you know she thinks he’s the reason why you’re so emotionally stunted (and she’s almost certainly right, but you’d rather not dwell on that).

“I just,” you start after a period of silence, your voice rough and raw. “I care about him so much.”

“I know you do,” she says gently.

“And I just want to tell him that, over and over.”

“I’m sure he knows.”

“And I know me loving him isn’t gonna fix all his problems, but god, I at least wanna try.”

“That’s perfectly natural.”

“Fuck, Rose, I’m a mess.”

“No, you’re just in love.”

“Yeah but like, is it healthy that I think about him all the time? That even right now, talking to you, I want nothing more than for him to be here, too?”

“You’re still in the early stages of sorting out these feelings. It’s only natural for you to fixate on their source. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go through something similar in the early months of my relationship with Kanaya; I would think of nothing but her for days at a time, crave her presence whenever she wasn’t around.”

“But you’re saying it’ll pass.”

“Something like that.”

“What if…” Your mouth feels dry. You lick your lips. “What if I don’t want it to? What if, in some sick and twisted kind of way, I _want_ to keep feeling like this?”

“Well…” she starts. “That’s the beauty of it. The old feelings never really go away. They simply get combined with new feelings, and in a way they balance each other out.”

“So... I’ll feel the same, but different.”

“I suppose you could put it like that.”

“I guess that kind of makes sense.”

“I guess it does.”

“Welp…” you say, getting up and stretching. “I think I’m gonna go find Karkat. Maybe lay in a pile with him or some shit. You know, bro stuff.”

“Good luck,” Rose says, returning her attention to her book.

“I’ll uh, see you around,” you say as you open the door. “So, uh… thanks for the talk.”

“No problem,” she says, idly turning a page.

“Kay… bye.”

“Bye.”

You stand in the hallway outside her room for a few moments before deciding, yeah, you may as well go looking for Karkat. And actually, laying in a pile sounds pretty nice right about now.


End file.
